Valhalla & the Viking Afterlife With Tom Shippey

In today’s show, I had the honor of talking with Tom Shippey, a British scholar who has taught at six universities in Britain and America, including both Oxford and Harvard, and who succeeded Tolkien (many years later) in the Chair of Medieval Literature at Leeds University. Tom is widely considered one of the world’s leading academic scholars on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, about whom he has written several books, as well as many books and articles on Old English, Old Norse, and medieval literature generally. We discuss his famous book ”Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings,” which you can find via the link below.